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By late processes had been introduced allowing CDSs that offset each other to be cancelled. Two of the key changes are:. The introduction of central clearing houses, one for the US and one for Europe. A clearing house acts as the central counterparty to both sides of a CDS transaction, thereby reducing the counterparty risk that both buyer and seller face.

The international standardization of CDS contracts, to prevent legal disputes in ambiguous cases where what the payout should be is unclear.

Speaking before the changes went live, Sivan Mahadevan, a derivatives analyst at Morgan Stanley, [75] one of the backers for IntercontinentalExchange's subsidiary, ICE Trust in New York, launched in , claimed that. It launched Single Name clearing in Dec By the end of , banks had reclaimed much of their market share; hedge funds had largely retreated from the market after the crises.

On March 3, its proposed acquisition of Clearing Corp. Intercontinental said in the statement today that all market participants such as hedge funds, banks or other institutions are open to become members of the clearinghouse as long as they meet these requirements. A clearinghouse acts as the buyer to every seller and seller to every buyer, reducing the risk of counterparty defaulting on a transaction. In the over-the-counter market, where credit- default swaps are currently traded, participants are exposed to each other in case of a default.

In April , hedge fund insiders became aware that the market in credit default swaps was possibly being affected by the activities of Bruno Iksil , a trader for J. Heavy opposing bets to his positions are known to have been made by traders, including another branch of J.

Morgan, who purchased the derivatives offered by J. Morgan in such high volume. The disclosure, which resulted in headlines in the media, did not disclose the exact nature of the trading involved, which remains in progress. A CDS contract is typically documented under a confirmation referencing the credit derivatives definitions as published by the International Swaps and Derivatives Association. The period over which default protection extends is defined by the contract effective date and scheduled termination date.

The confirmation also specifies a calculation agent who is responsible for making determinations as to successors and substitute reference obligations for example necessary if the original reference obligation was a loan that is repaid before the expiry of the contract , and for performing various calculation and administrative functions in connection with the transaction.

By market convention, in contracts between CDS dealers and end-users, the dealer is generally the calculation agent, and in contracts between CDS dealers, the protection seller is generally the calculation agent. It is not the responsibility of the calculation agent to determine whether or not a credit event has occurred but rather a matter of fact that, pursuant to the terms of typical contracts, must be supported by publicly available information delivered along with a credit event notice.

Typical CDS contracts do not provide an internal mechanism for challenging the occurrence or non-occurrence of a credit event and rather leave the matter to the courts if necessary, though actual instances of specific events being disputed are relatively rare.

CDS confirmations also specify the credit events that will give rise to payment obligations by the protection seller and delivery obligations by the protection buyer. Typical credit events include bankruptcy with respect to the reference entity and failure to pay with respect to its direct or guaranteed bond or loan debt. CDS written on North American investment grade corporate reference entities, European corporate reference entities and sovereigns generally also include restructuring as a credit event, whereas trades referencing North American high-yield corporate reference entities typically do not.

Finally, standard CDS contracts specify deliverable obligation characteristics that limit the range of obligations that a protection buyer may deliver upon a credit event. Trading conventions for deliverable obligation characteristics vary for different markets and CDS contract types.

Typical limitations include that deliverable debt be a bond or loan, that it have a maximum maturity of 30 years, that it not be subordinated, that it not be subject to transfer restrictions other than Rule A , that it be of a standard currency and that it not be subject to some contingency before becoming due. The premium payments are generally quarterly, with maturity dates and likewise premium payment dates falling on March 20, June 20, September 20, and December The European sovereign debt crisis resulted from a combination of complex factors, including the globalisation of finance ; easy credit conditions during the — period that encouraged high-risk lending and borrowing practices; the — global financial crisis ; international trade imbalances; real-estate bubbles that have since burst; the — global recession ; fiscal policy choices related to government revenues and expenses; and approaches used by nations to bail out troubled banking industries and private bondholders, assuming private debt burdens or socialising losses.

The Credit default swap market also reveals the beginning of the sovereign crisis. The definition of restructuring is quite technical but is essentially intended to respond to circumstances where a reference entity, as a result of the deterioration of its credit, negotiates changes in the terms in its debt with its creditors as an alternative to formal insolvency proceedings i.

During the Greek sovereign debt crisis, one important issue was whether the restructuring would trigger Credit default swap CDS payments. European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund negotiators avoided these triggers as they could have jeopardized the stability of major European banks who had been protection writers. An alternative could have been to create new CDS which clearly would pay in the event of debt restructuring. The market would have paid the spread between these and old potentially more ambiguous CDS.

This practice is far more typical in jurisdictions that do not provide protective status to insolvent debtors similar to that provided by Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code. In particular, concerns arising out of Conseco 's restructuring in led to the credit event's removal from North American high yield trades. As described in an earlier section, if a credit event occurs then CDS contracts can either be physically settled or cash settled.

The development and growth of the CDS market has meant that on many companies there is now a much larger outstanding notional of CDS contracts than the outstanding notional value of its debt obligations. This is because many parties made CDS contracts for speculative purposes, without actually owning any debt that they wanted to insure against default. The trade confirmation produced when a CDS is traded states whether the contract is to be physically or cash settled. When a credit event occurs on a major company on which a lot of CDS contracts are written, an auction also known as a credit-fixing event may be held to facilitate settlement of a large number of contracts at once, at a fixed cash settlement price.

During the auction process participating dealers e. A second stage Dutch auction is held following the publication of the initial midpoint of the dealer markets and what is the net open interest to deliver or be delivered actual bonds or loans.

The final clearing point of this auction sets the final price for cash settlement of all CDS contracts and all physical settlement requests as well as matched limit offers resulting from the auction are actually settled. According to the International Swaps and Derivatives Association ISDA , who organised them, auctions have recently proved an effective way of settling the very large volume of outstanding CDS contracts written on companies such as Lehman Brothers and Washington Mutual.

Below is a list of the auctions that have been held since There are two competing theories usually advanced for the pricing of credit default swaps. The first, referred to herein as the 'probability model', takes the present value of a series of cashflows weighted by their probability of non-default. This method suggests that credit default swaps should trade at a considerably lower spread than corporate bonds.

Under the probability model, a credit default swap is priced using a model that takes four inputs; this is similar to the rNPV risk-adjusted NPV model used in drug development:. If default events never occurred the price of a CDS would simply be the sum of the discounted premium payments. So CDS pricing models have to take into account the possibility of a default occurring some time between the effective date and maturity date of the CDS contract.

If we assume for simplicity that defaults can only occur on one of the payment dates then there are five ways the contract could end:. To price the CDS we now need to assign probabilities to the five possible outcomes, then calculate the present value of the payoff for each outcome. The present value of the CDS is then simply the present value of the five payoffs multiplied by their probability of occurring.

At either side of the diagram are the cashflows up to that point in time with premium payments in blue and default payments in red.

If the contract is terminated the square is shown with solid shading. The riskier the reference entity the greater the spread and the more rapidly the survival probability decays with time.

To get the total present value of the credit default swap we multiply the probability of each outcome by its present value to give. In the "no-arbitrage" model proposed by both Duffie, and Hull-White, it is assumed that there is no risk free arbitrage. Both analyses make simplifying assumptions such as the assumption that there is zero cost of unwinding the fixed leg of the swap on default , which may invalidate the no-arbitrage assumption. However the Duffie approach is frequently used by the market to determine theoretical prices.

Under the Duffie construct, the price of a credit default swap can also be derived by calculating the asset swap spread of a bond. If a bond has a spread of , and the swap spread is 70 basis points, then a CDS contract should trade at However, there are sometimes technical reasons why this will not be the case, and this may or may not present an arbitrage opportunity for the canny investor.

The difference between the theoretical model and the actual price of a credit default swap is known as the basis. Critics of the huge credit default swap market have claimed that it has been allowed to become too large without proper regulation and that, because all contracts are privately negotiated, the market has no transparency. Furthermore, there have been claims that CDSs exacerbated the global financial crisis by hastening the demise of companies such as Lehman Brothers and AIG.

In the case of Lehman Brothers, it is claimed that the widening of the bank's CDS spread reduced confidence in the bank and ultimately gave it further problems that it was not able to overcome. However, proponents of the CDS market argue that this confuses cause and effect; CDS spreads simply reflected the reality that the company was in serious trouble. Furthermore, they claim that the CDS market allowed investors who had counterparty risk with Lehman Brothers to reduce their exposure in the case of their default.

Credit default swaps have also faced criticism that they contributed to a breakdown in negotiations during the General Motors Chapter 11 reorganization , because certain bondholders might benefit from the credit event of a GM bankruptcy due to their holding of CDSs. Critics speculate that these creditors had an incentive to push for the company to enter bankruptcy protection. Furthermore, CDS deals are marked-to-market frequently.

This would have led to margin calls from buyers to sellers as Lehman's CDS spread widened, reducing the net cashflows on the days after the auction. Senior bankers have argued that not only has the CDS market functioned remarkably well during the financial crisis; that CDS contracts have been acting to distribute risk just as was intended; and that it is not CDSs themselves that need further regulation but the parties who trade them.

Some general criticism of financial derivatives is also relevant to credit derivatives. Warren Buffett famously described derivatives bought speculatively as "financial weapons of mass destruction.

In the meantime, though, before a contract is settled, the counterparties record profits and losses—often huge in amount—in their current earnings statements without so much as a penny changing hands. The range of derivatives contracts is limited only by the imagination of man or sometimes, so it seems, madmen.

To hedge the counterparty risk of entering a CDS transaction, one practice is to buy CDS protection on one's counterparty. The positions are marked-to-market daily and collateral pass from buyer to seller or vice versa to protect both parties against counterparty default, but money does not always change hands due to the offset of gains and losses by those who had both bought and sold protection.

The monoline insurance companies got involved with writing credit default swaps on mortgage-backed CDOs. Some media reports have claimed this was a contributing factor to the downfall of some of the monolines.

During the financial crisis , counterparties became subject to a risk of default, amplified with the involvement of Lehman Brothers and AIG in a very large number of CDS transactions. This is an example of systemic risk , risk which threatens an entire market, and a number of commentators have argued that size and deregulation of the CDS market have increased this risk.

For example, imagine if a hypothetical mutual fund had bought some Washington Mutual corporate bonds in and decided to hedge their exposure by buying CDS protection from Lehman Brothers.

After Lehman's default, this protection was no longer active, and Washington Mutual's sudden default only days later would have led to a massive loss on the bonds, a loss that should have been insured by the CDS. Chains of CDS transactions can arise from a practice known as "netting". However, if the reference company defaults, company B might not have the assets on hand to make good on the contract. It depends on its contract with company A to provide a large payout, which it then passes along to company C.

The problem lies if one of the companies in the chain fails, creating a " domino effect " of losses. For example, if company A fails, company B will default on its CDS contract to company C, possibly resulting in bankruptcy, and company C will potentially experience a large loss due to the failure to receive compensation for the bad debt it held from the reference company.

Even worse, because CDS contracts are private, company C will not know that its fate is tied to company A; it is only doing business with company B. As described above , the establishment of a central exchange or clearing house for CDS trades would help to solve the "domino effect" problem, since it would mean that all trades faced a central counterparty guaranteed by a consortium of dealers.

There is a risk of having CDS recharacterized as different types of financial instruments because they resemble put options and credit guarantees. If a CDS is a notional principal contract, pre-default periodic and nonperiodic payments on the swap are deductible and included in ordinary income. The thrust of this criticism is that Naked CDS are indistinguishable from gambling wagers, and thus give rise in all instances to ordinary income, including to hedge fund managers on their so-called carried interests, [] and that the IRS exceeded its authority with the proposed regulations.

The accounting treatment of CDS used for hedging may not parallel the economic effects and instead, increase volatility. In contrast, assets that are held for investment, such as a commercial loan or bonds, are reported at cost, unless a probable and significant loss is expected. Thus, hedging a commercial loan using a CDS can induce considerable volatility into the income statement and balance sheet as the CDS changes value over its life due to market conditions and due to the tendency for shorter dated CDS to sell at lower prices than longer dated CDS.

One can try to account for the CDS as a hedge under FASB [] but in practice that can prove very difficult unless the risky asset owned by the bank or corporation is exactly the same as the Reference Obligation used for the particular CDS that was bought. A new type of default swap is the "loan only" credit default swap LCDS. This is conceptually very similar to a standard CDS, but unlike "vanilla" CDS, the underlying protection is sold on syndicated secured loans of the Reference Entity rather than the broader category of "Bond or Loan".

Also, as of May 22, , for the most widely traded LCDS form, which governs North American single name and index trades, the default settlement method for LCDS shifted to auction settlement rather than physical settlement. The auction method is essentially the same that has been used in the various ISDA cash settlement auction protocols, but does not require parties to take any additional steps following a credit event i. Because LCDS trades are linked to secured obligations with much higher recovery values than the unsecured bond obligations that are typically assumed the cheapest to deliver in respect of vanilla CDS, LCDS spreads are generally much tighter than CDS trades on the same name.

If the associated credit instrument suffers no credit event, then the buyer continues paying premiums at t 5 , t 6 and so on until the end of the contract at time t n. However, if the associated credit instrument suffered a credit event at t 5 , then the seller pays the buyer for the loss, and the buyer would cease paying premiums to the seller.

Parts of this article those related to legality of naked CDS in Europe need to be updated. Please update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information. Causes of the European sovereign-debt crisis. Retrieved 31 January Why do they exist? Retrieved January 5, Archived from the original PDF on March 23, Retrieved April 8, Some locations, like the United Kingdom, have legalized the activity but require citizens to access sites housed and regulated within their jurisdiction exclusively.

This is why our country-specific recommendations are so helpful. Maybe you have a specific sports league on which you like to focus on primarily when sports betting. This is common for most handicappers; you bet the associations with which you have the most experience and the most in-depth understanding.

These recommendations have been ranked by how well they accommodate betting on that specific league. After all, global sports like soccer, basketball, horse racing, and cricket are played in multiple professional leagues or events in many different counties.

Following our links based on a specific sport will take you to a section of our website that will not only share our recommended betting sites but will also share a wealth of knowledge about each game. You can find pages dedicated to the history of various sports, helpful gambling articles that share tips, betting strategies, and detailed gambling systems, as well as numerous other guides that have been written to maximize your success.

Our team of professional gamblers and handicappers is always researching new ways to win, with new blogs and articles getting published daily. The most massively popular sporting events tend to receive additional attention from online sportsbooks. Rather than the typical wagers, betting sites will go all-out, selling odds on a wide range of exotic wagers and event-exclusive bets.

Finding the best betting sites based on a particular event is the most efficient way of discovering the sportsbooks that offer the best action for that contest.

For example, during March Madness, the top NCAA Tournament betting sites may have a more extensive list of wagers, including bracket pools and other fun bets. The Super Bowl traditionally inspires bookmakers to create all kinds of wild prop bets that can be as humorous as they are interesting. Compared to other forms of sports betting, daily fantasy sports are relatively new. While classic fantasy sports competitions last the entire season and require you to join or create a league, DFS focus exclusively on the action that week or day.

The tournament or contest only lasts for a day or a few days, and depending on the competition you chose and the stakes, either one person or many will win money. Like other forms of gambling, some betting sites are better than others at providing this service.

Fast Payout Betting Sites. Sports betting is an excellent way to add excitement and stakes to an already-entertaining contest or event. First, you should know what both a bankroll and a staking plan are, and how to organize them. With these basic fundamentals, you can begin sports betting with a considerable advantage over most novice gamblers and fewer worries regarding problem gambling behaviors.

The first time you try anything can be a little nerve-wracking. Casino games and sports betting both come with all kinds of unique terminology that may seem confusing at first. Our glossary and FAQ pages have got you covered. A handicapper is someone who studies data and other factors in an effort to predict the probable outcomes of sports games.

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Talk to someone personally so that you can verify that the lender offers good customer service and provides you with transparent information. Make sure that you read the fine print of the loan you are planning to sign for, and that you understand any and all costs that you could incur if you agree to the terms. My name is Sarah, I've spent considerable time writing and am now exploring the use of marketing through blogging. Feel free to contact me if you have any inquiries about my content.

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